ARCHITECTURE TODAY

Evening Post, Issue 60, 11 March 1936, Page 5

ARCHITECTURE TODAY

DRESSED IN MANY GUISES

Mr. Oswald P. Milne, lecturing on present-day architecture • before the Royal Society of Arts, said that, in spite of excesses, fashions, and absurdities, he was wholeheartedly in sympathy with the spirit and idea that informed the best of modern architecture, for it recognised the machine and its possibilities of repetition and mass production; it recognised that the slick and mathematically true surface of machine-mad« material could produce a quality of its own, states "The Times."

With his new freedom, Mr. Milne said, the architect could attack his problem with no preconceived ideas about the architectural lines of his plan or the style of its exterior. The thing- that mattered was what was ,going to happen in the building, what

use every part was going to be put to, and how the whole could be arranged so as best to meet these needs. The architect, freed from the shackles of designing in a past style, had.to his hand numberless new materials and new ways of using them. He was at the same time confronted with many social changes, making new demands on planning and organisation. Was it to be wondered at that architecture today was dressed in many guises?

The material that had chiefly caught the imagination of the new world was reinforced concrete. To present this concrete structure in seemly form was one of the problems of the architect today. So exciting was it to find a material with new possibilities that-it was small wonder that some designers were inclined to lose their heads. A material eminently suited to the spanning of large spaces was being used when ordinary construction would be more serviceable and economic. Be^ cause with it they could eliminate the supporting wall and could construct easily the flat roof, some would per-

suade them that their climate was more delectable than it was: that to live in a glass house and sun-bathe on the roof were desirable in every circumstance, although thty had long found the glare in the conservatory unpleasant, and the close proximity of the suburban house unpropitjous for the sequestered sun-bath. The flat roof was no new thing, but the old builder f,und that in this wet climate the pitched roof threw off the rain more quickly.

Concrete would come into, its own as suitable for fine building only when a pleasing and economic material that could be used as a permanent shuttering was evolved. ■ Unadorned concrete was not going to satisfy them for the surface of their buildings anymore than it.did the Romans, and to cover it with plaster was but a povertystricken expedient, unsuited at ,' any rate to the town or to buildings of any importance. As soon as its slick whiteness and newness faded it wore a bedraggled, shabby.'and squalid look.